THE BROKENHEARTED

PSALM 34:19

The Lord Is Close To The Brokenhearted.

Those Whose Spirits Are Crushed, He Saves.

            Nearly a thousand years before Christ’s birth the psalmist, possibly David, wrote those words and a thousand years after that, Jesus came as the personification of those words.  The people saw the proof that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted in his deeds.

            As he was passing though Naim, he saw a funeral procession.  The deceased was a young man, the only son of his mother who was a widow.  The culture was very cruel to such a woman and Jesus immediately went to her and raised her son.

Jesus knew full well that such a thing would be trumpeted far and wide and bring trouble, but his compassion for the broken hearted was too powerful to be stopped.

            He came to Jacob’s well and saw a Samaritan woman at the well.  It was near noon and the women of the town had come and gone by then but the woman was there alone.  Jesus sensed that she was an outcast and broke all the rules and spoke to her.  His concern for her, his acceptance of her as someone worth his time, was a shock to her and his disciples, but for different reasons; she, because being treated as an intelligent human was unheard of, and they, because of fear that condemnation would come from breaking with tradition.  But Jesus’ compassion again overrode all other considerations.

            On the street one day a woman was thrown at his feet.  The crowd said she was caught in adultery and should, according to Moses, be stoned.  They did this as a test of him.  If he agreed, then he was a hypocrite when he preached mercy.  If he disagreed, he would be disobeying the laws of Moses.  In this case Jesus did not react immediately but instead stood quietly and listened to the mob and saw their lustful hope that they would be able to carry out the sentence.  Finally with gentleness he gave his answer, “Ye who are without sin, cast the first stone.”  Then as they drifted away, he spoke to her and with all the love and mercy he possessed dismissed her to start a new life.

            These three, and they are just a few examples, became the earliest followers from among the ordinary people.  The list goes on and on. The most extraordinary thing is that in the years following these events, the vast numbers of followers of Christ never saw him, never heard him speak but believed in the truth of these events.  Believed so deeply that they would (and do) die for that belief rather than deny it. If we want to count ourselves among them we must regard the problems of this world with the same compassion because Jesus did not show compassion in a vacuum but showed us the way to live by it.

            Can you imagine what wonders we could perform if we approached everything with compassion?  Instead of the cost of everything, we would first consider the value of the human person.  Instead of letting prejudice rule, we would seek understanding.    The psalm is more than a promise, it is also a challenge to us to be close to the brokenhearted and to strengthen those whose spirits are crushed with the promise that God loves them because we know it is true.

Blessings,

Carol Lemelin OPA